Adam had us drawing comics inspired by random words this week. I was shocked to get “Darth Vader” and “flying Ninjas” together with the more tractable “an unexpected visitor.” Not being into martial arts films, ninjas have somewhat passed me by, so I substitued vaguely Middle-Eastern warriors. Having seen Star Wars just the once (when it came out) I didn’t remember much about Darth — maybe he isn’t as cuddly as I remember. I left off the panel with the group hug, just in case.

- My company requests permission to set up a pyramid scheme in your country, O Pharaoh
- Over my dead body
- So, dammit, your whole mision to arrange future appointments in Nubia was fruitless?
- Not quite, sir, we have some dates

1. (Hello, is that the medieval society?)
2. ~yes sir, it is (I'd like to join, please)
3. ~sorry, we disbanded in 1517 (what a pity)
4. ~I can put you on the waiting list, and if the dark ages begin again...
5. ~we'll send you a letter.
6. ~if we can find anyone who can write

This comic took me a few goes to get right. Here’s the first version (presumably occurring on the honeymoon just a few days later. They’ll remember the honeymoon for years to come because they got such a good roaming deal.)

Now you have a chance to get a glimpse some of the intense planning that goes into the production of these apparently simple comics. The strategy team monitor and analyse the entire internet daily, to come to a decision on what category of joke to use in a given issue, and pass their recommendations to the humour team whose job it is to come up with the actual jokes. The strategists subsist in the sub-basement, and have to send all their results up to the light and space of Eagle’s Tower where the humourists give life to comic ideas. It’s quite a lot of stairs, and there are many categories for the results, so we employ a team of runners to deliver them. Today, rather make a comic, I decided to show you what these reports look like. It’s very simple to just trip up a random runner on his climb and catch his sealed missive as he falls down into the spiral — I hastily add that we have a heap of straw at the bottom to prevent too many injuries as this is a common sport amongst bored humourists. Anyway, it probably turned out for the best as a quick check around the humour team indicates that none of us has a clue how to make a graph funny.

I would like to preempt any complaints about violations of the laws of physics by pointing out that (1) in Invisibulia those laws are somewhat different (and indeed we know that photons need follow only a very relaxed set of Maxwell’s equations, who knows how space-time might or might not interact with magnetism); and (2) this is a comic.